As friends,
neighbors,
and relatives leave us the memory and images
of Jewish Skȩpe recede, not unlike this washed
out windshield view of the Skȩpe town sign in
the background. Our inspiration to provide a
visual snapshot of what was once Skȩpe comes
from the moving photographic work And I
Still See Their
Faces. Our photographic record of
Skȩpe is minimal, in much the same way that
history treats Skepe, but through the faces in
the photos we hope you get a glimpse of what
was once Jewish Skȩpe. We invite all the sons
and daughters of Skȩpe and their descendants
to contribute to this remembrance site. Your
photos, stories, and memories are always
welcome and should become part of the record
on KehilaLinks.

Dedicated to:

My grandmother Mollie Zamoskiewicz and her brothers
and sisters - Motel, Feivel, Brana, Lea, Hudes,
Salomon, Rywka, Chava - were all born and raised in
Skẹpe, Poland. Mollie was the first to
immigrate to and stay in the United States in 1912
when she was 16 years old. Three of her
sisters remained in Europe. This website is
dedicated to the memory of the Zamoskiewicz
family, especially my cousins who survived the
Holocaust (Faye, Sarah, Avraham, and Fela), and to
the memory of Jewish life and culture in Skępe,
Poland.

Why we remember
Skępe

The
Importance of Remembrance

written and translated from the
Hebrew by Maor Shavit

inspired by Deuteronomy 6:
10 - 12

You
inherit some things - a home, a family,
a country, vineyards, olive trees
... they are there, ready for you.
You didn’t work for them, you have no idea of the
difficulties involved in achieving them, you don’t
know what life means without them.You have no
personal affinity towards them.So you
might forget. Forget the value of these things.
Forget their importance for you.Is it
possible to establish personal affinity towards
something that already exists? Something that was
given to you? Indeed, you won’t destroy something
and rebuild it just to gain this affinity?!This is where the
importance of remembrance is revealed.
By remembering something you reconstruct it, as if
it actually happened in your past, preceding your present. It
becomes a place in a virtual path toward things in
your life -a home, a
family, a country, vineyards, olive
trees ...That is
how the obvious becomes a personal accomplishment
and the insignificant becomes something to care
about.

Partial remarks
from a speech by Arthur Kurzweil on June 28, 1995
at the Jewish Genealogy Society, Washington, DC.

“...We are a rebuilding generation. We come
after two of the worst moments of Jewish
history--one, of course, the Holocaust when a third
of our people were murdered and two, the mass
migration of Jews when our families were torn
apart... And I believe that in the same way that the
Talmud says that when the Temple was destroyed, they
rebuilt by doing their family trees, in our
generation we have the same task. As a rebuilding
generation, we are doing our family trees to
rebuild, to put the pieces back together again, to
take that shattered people and to bring them back
together again.”

We invite and
encourage you to add your family stories,
memories and photos of Skępe.

This site is hosted at no cost by JewishGen, Inc.,
The home of Jewish Genealogy. If you have been
aided in your research by this site and wish to
further our mission of preserving our history for
future generations, your JewishGen-erosity
is greatly appreciated.